Equipping fathers to live active, involved, healthy lives with their children

Ep 65: Finding hope in the smallest amount of existence, with Derek Fitzgerald

Through modern medicine, more people than ever who face cancer are able to fight it off. But what do you do when the treatments that fight off one life-threatening disease bring on another?

This week's Fit Dad Fitness Podcast guest, Derek Fitzgerald, faced that reality. Derek fought and won his battle against cancer in the early 2000s only to find out that the treatments he had received had caused his heart to go into failure. And for seven years, he faced a slow and exhausting decline of his health, until he reached the day that he feared would be his last.

Hanging on to what he calls "hope in the smallest amount of existence," on that day, Derek got word that a heart donor had been found, and he would be getting a new — a third — chance at life.

His journey since then is nearly unexplainable, as he went from spending his days in a hospital bed with barely enough energy to make it to the bathroom and back, to now, Derek has competed in eight Iron Man Triathlons and finished six of them.

You absolutely must listen to this episode, as Derek recounts the process of healing and of setting his goal on running an Iron Man, while trying to comes to grips with the truth that in order for him to have life, someone else had to lose theirs.